Where are you from?

Let's talk about some places

“Daddy, where was I born?”

It’s one of those questions my kids like to ask where they already know the answer. For whatever reason, they like hearing it from me.

“C’mon, you know. You were born right here in Louisville.”

It’s true—my kids are Kentucky natives, as odd as that sometimes sounds to me, having moved to the Bluegrass State in my 30s. They’ve grown up understanding that a holiday season built around a horse race is a normal thing. They can pronounce Louisville correctly, something that can take an adult years—or a fair amount of bourbon—to learn.

(It’s Lou-uh-vuhl. Enunciate it less than you think you should.)

They have taken sides in the rivalry between the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky, a process of self-identification as important to a Kentucky grade-schooler as finding out their Hogwarts house. They’ve both opted for UK, which is the less personally-objectionable of the two options to me, given the long history of direct competition and animosity between UofL and my alma mater, the University of Cincinnati.

I digress.

“Are you from here?”

They know the answer to this one, too, but again, they find it necessary to ask.

I’m from Ohio. To state that I was born in Ohio is to understate the matter, of course. I am culturally Ohioan, through and through and to my very fiber. I am terminally Ohioan. I call soda “pop”, I said “ope” when scootching by someone before ever realizing that was a thing, and I smile and wave at strangers because it is coded into my DNA to do so.

I was born within the city limits of Cleveland, and lived in the western suburbs until my freshman year of high school, when my family moved to suburban Columbus, where my parents still live. I spent six years at the University of Cincinnati before a decade-long stint in New York City, and I’ve lived in Louisville for the last nine years.

(I have lived in all four major cities along Interstate 71, and if I ever get a tattoo it is going to be a stylized road map of the highway, possibly incorporating Grandpa’s Cheesebarn and the HELL IS REAL billboard. Again, I digress.)

If I’m driving home from Columbus to Louisville and my wife or parents ask where I am, I can say “just passed HELL IS REAL” and they’ll know exactly what I mean. (Getty Images / tacojim)

I celebrate Ohio at all turns. A huge portion of my wardrobe is comprised of Cincinnati Bearcats or Cleveland Guardians/Cavs/Browns gear. Despite being old enough to know better, I still tie a significant portion of my emotional well-being to the success and failure of Ohio’s sports teams, a risky thing to do given the historical track records of said teams.

I have embraced a love of Cincinnati-style chili in public that’s disproportionate to my actual consumption of the dish (once every couple months), because it’s an easy way of showing pride in where I’m from. I have rarely been as baffled or as delighted as I was the time I was walking down a street in Munich, Germany in 2003 and discovered that they had an outpost of Donato’s Pizza, an Ohio-based chain that isn’t even one of my favorites but was a joy to see more than 4,000 miles from home.

All this said? I haven’t lived in Ohio since 2006. I haven’t lived in Cleveland, the epicenter of my Ohio identity, since 1997. Despite holding such a deep well of fondness for both the state and the city, I have no particular plans on returning, either.

So why do I embrace them as much as I do?

Getty Images / Henryk Sadura

It’s a shorthand, I suppose—a frivolous little window into who I am. I might not know you, but if you can sing along to the Garfield 1-2323 jingle, then just like Breakfast at Tiffany’s—hey, that’s one thing we’ve got.

My wife and I first met in New York City, where we’d both lived for three years at the time. A good portion of our first date was spent bonding over our shared Midwestern-ness, her having grown up near Fort Wayne, Indiana. (Shout out to DeBrand’s Chocolates, Fort Wayne’s Famous Coney Island, and Henry’s Restaraunt.) Knowing this about her didn’t tell me all about her—didn’t tell me who she was as a person, what she believes in, what she values or what makes her tick—but it gave us a little opening, a chance to get there and eventually find out the rest. (Those Kentucky kids might not exist without it!)

The best part about The Action Cookbook Newsletter is you, the readers.

I’m proud of the community of readers that’s built up here over the past four and a half years, and I love nothing more than when you get talking—not just to me, but to each other, too. Every once in a while, I think it’s important for us to go around the room and reintroduce ourselves. I ask a lot of questions of you in my Friday newsletters, but today I’m going to make it the most basic of icebreakers.

Tell us about where you’re from.

Interpret that however you’d like—where you were born, where you grew up, where you come from. Tell us something we should know about that place, and something about it that you hold dear whether you still live there or haven’t been there in many years.

Also, if you can sing along to the Garfield 1-2323 jingle, please let me know. We’re friends now.

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)